Undisturbed
by Ephemeral Everlast
Summary: There are specific times where having one's fate chosen for them is safer, much easier than seeking out ways to make a deal with temptation. After all, there are always sacrifices. Inutaisho/Izayoi Alternate scenario, intensely dark-themed


_A rework of an old poem, "Undisturbed." A bit of an alternate situation, in which case Inutaisho and Izayoi existed for a short while after Inuyasha's birth. Very dark-themed, in which doom and consequence play their role, not recommended for those with light-hearted tastes. _

_Ownership - unwillingly - handed over._

* * *

The problem was that they both had been handed the world. He had assumed the title like his forefathers had before him, gaining the position and entitlement of power. She, by birth, was a blue-blood, nursed by the wealth and elegant life-style her mother's marriage allowed her.

They were alive when they were given the option to use their minds, nursing identities to life beneath what their positions expected of them. He fought in wars, blistering through battle after battle, claiming land and a grudging respect for his power and promotion for peace, but at the cost of allowing him to do as he pleased in his kingdom. She rebelled in her own way, sneaking out when she was supposed to be asleep, drawing grotesque creatures and abstract beauty when it was the lesson was supposed to be about flowers, and lastly, finding pleasure by her hand alone to slake her ever-budding lust for more.

When they weren't allowed to fight for something however, that's when the trouble began. He had plenty to keep him busy, but that was simply it: distractions from living, from taking, from pleasing himself. She was waited on hand and foot, and she despised the fact that she couldn't choose what she wanted from her life, who she could love, who she could be with. Despite how much power they were presumed to have, they were merely puppets, undisturbed little things that thirsted for so much more than what they were offered.

Both believed in something spiritual, he the many gods of his past and she the destiny that she always thought would lead her to bliss. That was why, when they had met under very ordinary circumstances, they agreed to meet again.

He asked why she wasn't terrified of him; she replied that she didn't find him terrifying, simply intimidating with the armor and many swords. She asked why he seemed dissatisfied; he replied that she was perceptive and that he wished he had been given the chance to gain his title on his own terms. That was the truth that linked them, the connection that bound them much tighter than any other trivial honesty could have.

Without his armor, he was perfection, the warmth of the sun in his veins, sunlight on her lips as she tasted him. Without her layers and layers of color, she was all curves, angles that he lost himself in, taking the full of her in with his eyes, his mouth, his tongue. Fingers entwined, their bodies meshed, and their cries were for their ears alone, the whispered elation of a tryst that was the serenade of taboo.

That could have been why they continued meeting: the thought of something forbidden to shake up the monotony, the ceaselessness of their existence. They had to disturb something, shake the butterfly in the glass bottle to see what would come of it.

He knew before her that she was with his child. His previous volition had altered considerably, his spotless name sullied by his actions. This pleased him to no end, for he had grown weary of being perfect; she propelled him towards purpose, along with the child within her.

Tapered fingers, fingers unblemished by a day's work spread across her middle, cradling the pronounced roundness of her stomach. She could feel the child moving, and with every kick, it reminded her that she chose this, that she wasn't as helpless as she had once believed. Whereas others called it sick, shameful, she lay awake, murmuring words of comfort to her child, to the life within her. She was not sick or shameful; she was everything she had ever dreamed she could be.

By moonlight he came for her, taking her in his arms to a place where the child could be safely born. The patrols her father had erected were little more than wooden toy soldiers in her lover's path, and he dodged them with effortless ease, a place of lodgings deep in the forest their recluse. There, he told her that she was the inspiration he needed, the flutter of life that exploded into an existence borne of flames. She told him that he gave her the courage to rebel, the right to disturb a peace that would have smothered her from its origin.

It was in the dawn's early light, as he whispered words in a language she didn't know across her stomach, that she knew an unearthly agony. Fingers ripped the sheets, nails digging into the foam of the mattress, screams ripping into the morning. He encouraged her, telling her to push, to continue, and then to rest, as her vision clouded over halfway through and almost didn't return. His tongue lapped at her entrance, at the head and shoulders of their child, one of the hardest parts over and done with. She closed her eyes and screamed her voice raw, hushed cries escaping her mouth, her body weeping with perspiration, a pain she didn't know mortals could feel.

Her son cried beautiful cries and as she slept, he marked her as his own. She awoke to find the most precious babe with eyes of the sun in her arms and she wept tears of fierce joy, made only more so by knowing that she was claimed as _his_, and would be forevermore.

There was something that she had quite forgotten however: they were still being hunted. Time was her Stygian drug, washing away all memory of her past, of any present danger that still lingered. Not three years had passed, golden years, beautiful years that fulfilled not her lifetime but so many more and they were running again, fleeing from the consequence of disrupting the flow of their past lives.

Day became night and the shadows choked her, fear cloistering her, her only capability being able to hold her child close. Her lover and mate had been hit many times, arrows dipped in poison and with a frantic plea to run, he launched her through the trees, his body hitting the earth with an audible thud. She screamed, hitting the earth safely, seemingly faraway from physical harm. But as to her mental sanity, her internal health, she knew his death as her own.

Limbs fumbled, managing to run and run with her child, with the link to a sacrifice she could never repay. And then she fell, arrows tasting the places of her back that he had cherished, once upon a time. Her child was crying, weeping for her in a wail that split apart any remnants of sanity she stitched into this wicked tapestry called life. She urged him to hide and when he refused, she rolled him as far away from her body as she could before blackness swallowed her, kicking and screaming, soul and mind whole.

It was consequence that was their undoing, an underestimation of any enemy working against them. Perhaps they would have been better off in ennui, without knowing temptation's promises.

Because after all, having one's path chosen for them was not the worst fate.


End file.
